01Who we are and what this covers
FieldFinders operates a marketplace where landowners offer paid access to their land for metal detecting, and detectorists book it. These terms cover the website, the app and anything else we run under the FieldFinders name. Using any of it means you accept them.
We are the marketplace, not a party to your booking. The agreement to detect on a particular piece of land is between the detectorist and the landowner. What we do is verify identity, hold and release payment, put the terms in writing, and keep a record of it.
02You must be eighteen
You need to be at least eighteen years old to hold an account. If you are under eighteen you may still detect on land a member has booked, but you must be accompanied by the adult who made the booking, and that adult carries the responsibility.
03Your account
Give us accurate details and keep them current. Your identity is checked before you can book, because a landowner is letting a stranger onto their property and is entitled to know who that person is.
One account per person. Do not share your login, do not let someone else book under your name, and tell us straight away if you think someone else has access to it.
04Bookings, payments and cancellation
Payment is taken when a booking is confirmed and held until the visit is finished, then released to the landowner. Payments are processed by Stripe, and their terms apply to the payment itself.
Cancel more than forty eight hours before the booked day and you are refunded in full. Inside forty eight hours the landowner has already turned other people away, so the fee is theirs. If the landowner cancels, or the land is not usable when you arrive, you are refunded in full whenever that happens.
Weather is not a cancellation. Ground conditions are part of the hobby. If a landowner closes the land for a genuine reason such as livestock, standing crops or flooding, that is a landowner cancellation and you get your money back.
05What we charge
Landowners set their own day rate. We take a service fee, shown to both sides before anything is confirmed. Nothing is added afterwards and nothing is taken from a landowner's payout beyond the fee they agreed to.
06What you agree not to do
Do not detect anywhere you have not booked. Do not pass a booking to someone else. Do not take a group when you booked for one. Do not contact a landowner to arrange a visit outside the platform after finding them through it, which cuts out the written agreement that protects you both.
The Acceptable Use Policy sets this out in full and forms part of these terms.
07Finds
Ownership of anything you recover is decided by the search agreement you and the landowner sign, not by us and not by custom. Our standard agreement splits finds equally by value unless you both write something different into it. Read it before you dig.
Some things are never yours to keep or to move, whoever owns the land. Human remains, graves and objects of Native American cultural patrimony are covered by federal and state law. The Finds and Ethics Code explains what to do, and following it is a condition of using FieldFinders.
08What we are responsible for
We are responsible for running the platform properly, holding your money safely, and doing what we say we will do with your data.
We are not responsible for what happens on the land. We do not own it, inspect it or supervise it. Detecting involves digging, uneven ground, farm machinery, livestock and occasionally buried metal that should not be disturbed. You take that on yourself, and the Detectorist Risk Waiver says so in plain terms.
Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our own negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow us to limit.
09Suspending or closing an account
We can suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, damages land, misleads a landowner or puts anyone at risk. Where we reasonably can we will tell you why and give you a chance to answer.
You can close your own account whenever you like. We keep booking and payment records afterwards for as long as tax and accounting law requires.
10Changes
We will post changes here and, if they materially affect you, email you before they take effect. Carrying on using FieldFinders after that means you accept them.
11Law and disputes
These terms are governed by the law of the state in which FieldFinders is established, and the courts of that state have jurisdiction.
Before anything formal, talk to us. Most complaints are a misunderstanding about a booking and are settled in a day. The Disputes and Complaints page sets out how.